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Description

Index and images of records related to civil rights complaints. The complaints consisted of problems which freedmen brought to the Bureau's attention. Many registers give the names of freedmen and the nature of the complaint, but others give only a synopsis of the case without names. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (often called the Freedmen’s Bureau) was created in 1865 at the end of the American Civil War to supervise relief efforts including education, health care, food and clothing, refugee camps, legalization of marriages, employment, labor contracts, and securing back pay, bounty payments and pensions.